KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Backyard Gold: How to Turn Your Database Into 25 Annual Transactions

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Summary:Coach Randy Byrd addresses the common trap of agents chasing "front-end" leads while neglecting their existing sphere of influence. Byrd argues that the "fortune is in the follow-up" and provides a mathematical breakdown of how a database of 250 people should yield 12 to 25 transactions annually if properly nurtured. The episode outlines a "16-touch" minimum annual plan, incorporating quarterly phone calls, monthly value items, and AI-assisted market reports. Listeners will learn a reciprocal "give-to-get" script to re-establish professional relationships with old contacts.

All right, cool, let's get started. Good afternoon. Coach Randy Bird here every single Tuesday, 12, 30 p.m. even if I'm flying around the world, except the airplanes won't let me do it on the airplane. I've tried. They won't let me. But we're here probably about 40 weeks a year. And it's for you to give you 15 to 30 minutes of coaching nuggets, coaching inspiration, answer questions. I'll do typically a Q&A at the end. But the bottom line is I want to help you find things that you could do in your real. estate business that are going to move the needle, right? That's what, at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. Let me see if I can spin this so I can let people in. There we go. I can see that a little better. Admit all, yeah, people still coming in. Okay, cool.

On mobile, it's a little harder to let people in after the, after the start. But I will get it. Good afternoon, good afternoon. So this week, what was on my mind is I had a agent reach out to me and she wanted more leads. we said okay no problems we had a conversation about that and we dug in and i asked her you know what's going on with your business it's down a lot of people's businesses are down last couple years have been tough in the real estate market it is turning it is we're starting to see a big wave coming so

that's a good thing but that makes this conversation today even so more relevant about it but she said i need more leads i said okay what's going on she goes i'm used to doing you know let's say 12 transactions and she's only did three or four and i said said, okay, well, let's look at this. And she just was thinking of leads on the front end, more business coming in so she could do more business. And that's a traditional trap that agents will get in from a coaching perspective. What I see is I see the fortune is in the follow-up, right, when you think of leads and things, but really the fortune is in your backyard. It's in your database. And you've heard this talk about a lot, but a people, a lot of agents still neglect

their particular database. So when we're looking at this, and if you're not, muted, mute yourself, please, just so we don't have any background noise. If you're not muted, mute yourself, please. And what's going on when you are looking in your own databases, people don't realize how to nurture that database correctly, right? It starts with, I don't want to bother my friends, and I don't want to, you know, be a salesperson too much. And then you finally get where you do a deal with somebody. And then they're afraid to follow it too much because they don't know what to say after the transaction, right? So it's that it's that friend zone a lot of times or people I respect. So they don't want to get into a posture where they're having communication

with your database, with your with the people that you've helped the most, the people that love you the most really on a regular basis. So this particular agent was that exact thing. She had over 250 people in her database, but she was looking for leads to come in because she felt like the database wasn't providing any business for her. And I said, well, mathematically, you should see about 12 transactions from that database of 250 people, up to potentially, up to potentially 25. So it's somewhere between that 5 and 10% of your database if they're properly connected with and nurtured. So let's bookmark that number for a minute.

So we looked at her database and she said she'd only done one out of the database in the last, you know, six months or so. So I said, well, let's talk about what the communication is with that database. And she just said, yeah, you know, whenever they ask me something, I reach out and I send a newsletter. I do a newsletter every month. I go, what's your open rate of the newsletter? She didn't know. So you see where I'm going with this. She's got a database that she's really not nurturing and talking to on a regular basis. So we started talking about the basics and I thought this would be a great topic to remind you guys of in your own businesses. So even if you, even if you're you're in referral status only, which a lot of agents are moving into referral status.

You know, we partner with the Realty Connect to help them have a place to land and have a safe place to keep your license for a low cost entry point, all the way up to top agents doing 25, 50 transactions a month. The conversations are going to be the same. You're just going to have more people in your database to have more conversations with. But what I like to do is I like to think of it this way. At very minimum, let's work backwards, at very minimum you should be speaking to database once a quarter right so write that down speak not email not newsletter not text speak to your database at least once a quarter that's four times a year so that's four contacts a year automatically and then i believe we should provide some kind of communication to them once a month on top of that

so that could be a newsletter that could be some item of value that could be a text that says hey just thinking of you this month. How are you doing? Anything new going on? Whatever it is. So now we've got four contacts that we've made through quarterly. Now we've got 12 contacts we've made through a monthly automation campaign or manual, whatever you want it to be, right? So now we're in that 16 contacts per year range. That's bare minimum, by the way. I think there's ways to accelerate it from there by doing client appreciation events, by doing maybe Christmas events, might be doing pop-bys or drive-bys, meaning that you're stopping by to say hi to them on top of these quarterly calls. Maybe you do that twice a year. So you could see how easily, easily we get into

where we're at 16, 18 contacts per year with people. That is a properly nurtured database. Keller Williams, when I ran and owned a Keller Williams office, Gary Keller taught us the 33 touch. A lot of people in the Keller Williams franchise model remember the 33 touch. That means you're basically reaching out to them every two weeks, 24 times a year. And then you're adding another nine touches throughout the year. That could be a quarterly phone call. That could be an appreciation event. But 33 touches a year is a very high touch nurturing system.

I personally think it's a little too much. But you can see how I just laid out somewhere around 16 is a really minimum number. Right. So if we have 16, 33, as long as you're living somewhere in that space, you're okay. but are you let's audit yourselves for a minute are you touching your your clients 16 times a year in your current situation in your database i'm going to say probably not so number one i'm going to give you some items and tools that you can use to touch them this 12 times in year and then if you're not muted eric maybe mute yourself just i got a little background noise from a couple people um

so number one quarterly contacts that's easy to put in your CRM as a remote or some other way. And then once a month, we're going to talk about some things that you could do. Number one, and newsletter is a great way to go. Newsletter, you're either talking about your business, you're talking about community events, you're talking about something that's cool in your database. There's a lot of different ways to skin the cat here, and it doesn't matter to me as long as you're communicating.

And then you're measuring open rates. So you can get over a 50, 60, 70 percent open rate in your database. All right. If you have a 10, 12, 14 percent open rate, you don't really have a valuable number. newsletter or content whatsoever. In our database, people that know like and trust us, we want to be above 50%, if not 80%. It's not uncommon for us to have an 80 or 85% open rate in our databases. So now that we've established that, newsletter's one item of value you could do. I like market updates and snapshots, right? So you could do a market update. If you really want to add steroids to

that you want to do a video market update to your database. Hey, this is Randy Bird. It's, you know, it's March. We're going to do the April 1st market update. Here in Phoenix, Arizona, the prices are up about 3%. The inventory is down 2%. Given us somewhat of a balanced buyer's market. So, but we're in a buyer's market. So you could talk about that three, four minutes, by the way, just put into chat GPT or Claude or one of the other ones. I live in blank area code like for me i go i live in 85383 area code please give me market statistics to do a three to five minute video to my database guess what that's all you have to do literally and it will spit it out for you and it will spit out a script and then you could take until that script and put it

into big view if you wanted to and then you can read it off your phone as your video in yourself you don't have to get fancy this little cell phone in our hands now has the ability to shoot 4k 50 foot per frame second, it's as good as you want it to be. It chunks up a lot of storage space when you do that. But if you did that video for three, four minutes, it could be a gigabyte or two gigabytes of information. Get it off your phone, get it into YouTube and do the things correctly. But imagine the power of this now to your database every month. Now you're adding value. What's going on? Another thing you can do is home values. If you sold them a home or if they bought a a home from you, you can update them with home values. What's your home worth? Maybe that's a quarterly

thing. So you go newsletter, market snapshot, what's going on in the market, and then valuation update, right? That could be a sequence very easily. This is completely up to you, and I'm happy to give you some guidance of what best practices may work for you. But the bottom line is we have to have this communication. And if we have this, and we do get our database to where there are over 100 to 200 to sometimes 300 people in our database that have given us permission, no like and trust us, we've done transactions with whatever it is. It doesn't matter if you've only sold six houses in your life. If you're part of the, if you're the mayor of your town, you're going to have 300

people in your database like that. If you're a member of Suroptimist or Exchange Club or Rotary, you're going to have 200 people in your database like that if you're purposeful. And if you don't, you have to be purposeful about adding them. Right. So now we have a plan for connecting with our database. If she'd had that, she would not be buying leads right now. What she's doing is buying front end leads to put in another broken system.

So she's hoping for business now through the leads and the cost of the leads are significant. On the low end, you're $3 a lead. If you do all your own Facebook and Instagram ads and you do AdWords and you do all the things yourself, you can get leads down to about three bucks a piece. But you have to build a relationship with them over the next six. eight months at minimum to get them into your database to then have a regular nurturing campaign. Or you can go Zillow leads where you're getting people looking specifically for properties. And that lead could be a 40% referral fee all the way up to a $3, $500 live transfer.

Which is best. It's the gold in your backyard, right? And you're walking over the gold in your backyard to go run leads on Facebook or Google AdWords or the next shiny object. that's the challenge. So it seems basic, but I'm going to remind you guys today that this is my highest and best for you today, and this is your highest and best to put into your business and deploy it. All right?

So any questions on that particular topic? I'm on my mobile, so just take yourself off mute, ask the question if you have one. And if you don't have questions, I might call BS because I just said a lot of information unless you have all these things working for you and you're doing 25 to 40 transactions a year, I'm going to challenge you that you don't have this in place. Hey, Randy, I got one.

Yes. So you made a great suggestion. You used chat GPT. Sometimes I notice GPTs can include older outdated information. So I just got to make sure I spot check some of the stuff that's given me, right? Just have it because I just want to make sure I'm getting the right date. or am I better off just going to my MLS and trying to pull stuff from there and put it into my GBT and saying, like, help me script for this? If you're proficient in the MLS, that's my best use, because if you can go into the MLS, you could pull up the reports like Rappetoni and Berius and Willamavalli MLS.

They all have reports that they do through analytics. That will be very, very industry specific and very targeted geographically. that's the best way to do it but a lot of agents don't understand to do it to solve that problem all you have to do is call your MLS and say I want to send out monthly reports how do I get there and they'll show you but the secret to chat GBT Claude and all the others are the prompt if you set a prompt and for instance if I said my my Arizona zip code's 85383 if I said give me a market snapshot of 85383 I want you to look at how many homes are on the market active, how many homes are selling average every month, what's the average sales price,

ask for the basics, then you could say things like don't include any data over six months old, or exclude data from this site, or make sure you include data from zillow.com, homes.com, realtor.com, and now home, which is Google's new search profile. So if you're specific with the prompt, it will get better and better, but it's only public-facing data, remember. The MLS is going to have data that's not public-facing. yet potentially. It's got just listed. It's got some of the closed data might have more information in the MLS than you're going to find publicly because public is just that. It's the public information through the portals and the IDX feeds. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, if you're having that

problem, I suspect that it's a prompt issue. So do the original thing and then spot check it a little bit and then ask it to prompt it to take older data out because it can pull data that's two, three, four years old. And to it, it's just data. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks, Randy. Yeah, you bet.

You'll be shocked at how good these things are now. I had a client of mine in the Sacramento area go on a listing appointment yesterday. And she put into Claude, which is an AI program, she put all the address and all her listing documents and all that stuff in there. And she said, wow, my seller with statistics and opportunities to upgrade their particular house, she put in the address. And it came up with this thing that was just mind-blowing, right? The house is 21 years old. Likely it's got this. I see permits were pulled for this.

I would suggest upgrading this house with paint and carpet. That's going to cost you about $7,000. The return on that investment should be a $1.75, which means you're going to about $13,000 of improved value on the list price. The average sell price or the average time in the market is 46 days. You're probably going to take 12 to 14 days off of that, get you into the, you know, it was just it went above and beyond what she expected. And she's a top agent.

She won the listing over three luxury agents because of what AI did. for her and she said she literally did it in about five minutes. Wow. That's huge. So that is the power of AI and let's be honest. We're still using it like Google. We're still going find me the best restaurant in, you know, Southern Phoenix that's not too expensive that has good reviews. That's how we're using chat. GPD instead of saying I'm going to upload my listing document, agreement, and all associated forms. I want you to look at this from a top producer's perspective. One, and I want you to list out all the things I might be missing, all the things

I might should be adding, and all the things my competitors are doing. Number two, second prompt, look at it from the seller's perspective. Look at the things that might be issues for sellers, questions that sellers might have that I can answer at a time. You could do all this stuff, and then you could send them that report. It's transparent, and not many agents are doing that, right? It's just a superpower that a lot of agents are not leaning into right now. Yeah.

Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Any other questions or anything around this particular topic? Anybody want to venture to tell me how many people they have in their database that are, I'm going to say, sphere of influence, SOI. I have 48,000 in my database. Obviously, I don't know them all. I've imported agents.

I've imported brokerages. I've imported, you know, client lists. I've done all kinds of things. But my actual hard database is a low number after 23 years of business. Anybody want to be bold and come on and tell me how many people are in their SOI database? Great. I got 3,000 in mine. Okay.

And so I'm going to, and this is Eric, right? Yeah. I'm a big fan of Eric. Him and I go way, way back. and I have a suspicion that I know where your database has come in from, but I'm also going to challenge you, Eric, that you don't have a database of 3000. You have a cell phone contact list of 3,000. A lot of more contacts in my phone that I've converted in.

Correct. And I was incorrect. It's actually closer to about 1900. I just double-checked. I thought it was 3,000, about 1900. And that's okay, but the answer is still the same, Eric. And like I said, I'm a big fan of yours, but you have 1,900 people in your contact list. Your database should be rock solid people that know like and trust you, number one, have said they would do business with you or you believe there's a high intent that they would do business with you.

Yeah. That's a database, right? Because if you just start mass mailing 1,900 people, market reports and all this stuff, your open rate is going to be that 10, 12 percent like I talked about. what I would do if I were you, Eric, and this is going to benefit everybody on the phone. This might take you all year. It's to call every one of the 1900 people in your database and say, still role play with you and I, Eric. Yeah.

You good with that? Yeah, let's do it. I'm in your database. I'm part of the 1900. You can or cannot remember me. It doesn't matter, right? You'll probably get the people that don't. remember you until you start going remember we met at this place or that place or i worked at

verizon or i was the head of this or you know we our kids were in baseball together whatever it is right everybody's got the same thing so what will be valuable for you is to have it sound something like this ring ring hey eric hey how's good it's randy bird do you remember me first of all i don't blame me if you don't do you remember i i i recognize your name i i haven't talked to you forever. So I have you in my phone. We're actually part of the, the Rotary Club together many years ago. And I had it in my phone, but we've really never had a business conversation. Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's right. I remember that. That ring a bell a little bit. It's okay. Yeah. It's all right. So what I like to do is,

first of all, I want to apologize. I should have been better about communicating with you professionally. I want to share with you what I'm doing in business. I want to find out what you're doing in business and find out how we can. work and collaborate it. Would that number one be okay? Yeah, that's fine. Okay, cool. So, well, number one, thank you for that permission to do that. I'm going to touch out really gently, probably once a month. And then what I like to do to my best clients, I'm always available for you, but like once a quarter, I'll reach out and have a physical conversation with you like this, okay? So very mild. Once a month, I'll send some item of value of what's going on in the real estate space

and all that. Does that sound like a pretty good plan to start? Yeah, that's fine. Okay, cool. And Eric, what I'm looking for on my side, then I want to ask you what I could do for you, what I'm looking on my side for is helping people buy, sell, invest, and rent.

I handle all three of those categories, including commercial and land in the buy and sell phase of things. But, well, first of all, today, do you know anybody looking to buy, sell, invent, or rent that? I can help maybe? I might actually have a friend that might be interested in selling. I'd have to confirm.

Yeah, please. Just let me know if I can help. And maybe once you find out and confirm the best thing to do, maybe do a three-way text intro. That way you can kind of connect him and I together. And then I can take over the conversation. He knows where it came from. And I want to make sure you get credit for it.

Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. I want to check with them first if that's all right. But yeah, I'll see if they're open to it. 100%. I'd rather you do that first. because he doesn't want a stranger calling him. And your endorsement means a lot in that.

So thank you for that. So now what about you? What are you doing in business? What can I help you with? And is there something I might be able to do to help your business move forward? Yeah. I mean, business's been good. I still have a soccer business I manage.

It's been growing quite a bit. Yeah, in terms of my house right now, I'm like, we're happy where we're at. So I'm not looking at to anything else. but, you know, maybe do some upgrades to the house, but that's about it right now. Okay. So tell me about your job again. What do you do? I own a business, a soccer business, which it has, it's actually like a soccer league for, you know, kids 18 and under.

How cool is that? That's a passion project, I bet. Absolutely. What about, would it be valuable to you if we maybe had, did a podcast together? We could talk about your business, promote it a little bit, and then I'll throw that stuff into my news. and promote your business. That sounds amazing. I think I'm always looking for opportunities to promote my business.

Well, that's what this is all about. I'm not going to ask without giving, right? I want this to be a two-way street. So listen, I want to be your real estate resource. And if you have another agent you love, keep them, it's okay. Let us compete. You know, may the best man or woman wins the way I live and how I roll. But let's see what we do to promote your business, get it maybe in our newsletter, do a podcast.

I think that's something I can get behind, helping the kids and that 18-under thing. That's really cool. So I'm stoked about that. I'm going to send you an email with my current contact information. I'll get your current address, phone number, email, get all that stuff updated as well. And let's, why don't you answer that email with some, your good contact information? And we'll set up a time we can take it to the next conversation. And then I'll put you on my VIP list.

I'll connect, like I said, maybe once a month, once a quarter with a phone call. And then obviously, I'm available at a Beacon call if it's a real estate need along the way. That sounds great. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, me too. Okay, very cool. I'll email you. I have it here and we'll talk soon.

Okay, pause, right? So how's that dialogue sound, y'all? That sounds great. I think you did a great. Yeah, I think really good conversation. there and just kind of, you know, obviously, Randy, you're, you teach us that it's not about you. It's about your caller. And it's about them, right?

And so you get me to talk about my business. That's where, that's where we start to open up and they start to, they, they create value by doing that. Because people want to talk about themselves. Amen. You know, thank you for saying that, Eric, because here's, here's what most agents do. Hey, Eric, it's Randy over at ABC Relative Company. And I just wanted to reach out and see if you had any buying or. selling needs I can help you with right now. Do you have anything right now? No.

Can you pray upon your friends and tell me a friend that might need one to buy or sell right now? Right. So can I, can I get you over a free valuation of your house right now? No, no. Okay. What about if I just emailed you a free report? It's no cost, honestly. Maybe. I might be right. Okay, I'm going to email a free report over and just I'll call you tomorrow and check in. on that report and see how everything you know see what i could do to help you it's a great time to sell right now by the way the rates are high but it's okay they're only at seven and a half percent and um i think it's you know i i'm just desperate i just need real estate business commission breath okay that's not far away from how this looks yeah yeah so if you use my

style you're going to be adding value and by the way that is a good contact now that you have one in your database, in my opinion, in your SOI. Now, just do the damn thing, right? Now, make sure you're sending something once a month. Make sure you giving them the phone call once a quarter. Put a automation in your CRM that allows you to do that. Lofty, bold trails, go high level, top producer, chime, any of them do it. Simple.

All you have to do is YouTube it. Just how do I make an automation where I send something out automatically every month? text, email, you can send market reports automatically with a click now and all the CRMs I operate in. There's just no excuse. And then you put a reminder on your CRM that every 90 days, they get a phone call. And you just open your computer and it says, here's the three people or 11 you're calling today, depending on how big your database is. Right?

If you've got 300 in your database, that means you're going to call 75 people a quarter. Every quarter is three months. That means you're calling 25 people a month. Every month has four weeks. That means you're calling around six people a day every day, right? Or that's six people. Yeah, six people a week. Six people a week.

That's child's play. Now you're only talking about 1.25 contacts per day. Six in a week. You can do it all on Friday. You can do it on Monday, whatever you want. That will perfectly manage a 300-sized database. Okay? Yeah.

I love that, Randy. All right. So I am, I'm going to leave it here. But guys, this is really the meat and potatoes of the real estate business. And once you get this done, then we could start talking about how we add leads to the depth of that SOI pond. Then we could talk about how we add, you know, client appreciation events and all the things to complement this. But getting out of order with this is, It's death for your business.

All right. Peace. Thanks for being here. I'll see you next week. I appreciate y'all. Have a great day. And it's Coach Bird saying, bye for now. Get to your SOI.

Put your database and get it right. Okay? Thanks much. Thank you, Randy. You bet. See, everybody. Guys, it's no use putting it off. The best time for an underwear refresh is now.

Tommy John underwear is designed for a perfect fit that stays put all day. There's zero-chafe. thanks to four times more stretch than competing brands, and their innovative horizontal quick draw fly is a game changer. With over 30 million pairs sold, there are thousands of men out there more comfortable than you. Don't settle for less. Go to Tommyjohn.com today for 25% off your first order with Code Comfort. That's Tommyjohn.com code comfort. Tommy John. Comfort Perfected.